Korean American history is not well known among American students. When one asks students whether they learned Korean American history while growing up or attending school, the answer is usually “no.” Even though Korean American history is not covered in U.S. history textbooks, it does not invalidate the experiences of Korean immigrants. Like any other Asian group in America, Korean Americans have historically been active participants in the making of what America was and is.

Korea was not receptive to foreign influences after the seventeenth century because of its turbulent experiences of invasions by neighboring countries. Due to the devastating effects of the Japanese invasions (1592 and 1597) and the Manchu invasions (1627 and 1636), Korea avoided interactions with foreign countries except China for more than two and a half centuries during which it was called the “Hermit Kingdom.” After a Japanese ship Unyo was driven away by the Koreans in 1875, however, Korea was forced to accept the disadvantageous foreign relations by signing the Treaty of Kanghwa of 1876 with Japan.

Under the treaty, the Japanese took over Korea‟s right to foreign trade. The treaty brought a self-imposed isolation of Korea to an end and eventually paved the way for other unequal international treaties with Western powers. The presence of foreigners turned the Korean peninsula into a battlefield in which the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) were fought over. After winning these two major battles, Japan formally declared Korea as its protectorate.

During these years of socioeconomic crises, Horace N. Allen, a Protestant medical missionary and a diplomat from the United States, convinced King Kojong to permit the emigration of Koreans to Hawaii. The timing was ideal for Allen to persuade King Kojong, since massive natural disasters of famine and drought devastated Korean farmers in the beginning of the 1900s. Farmers who had lost their major source of income and food started moving to port cities such as P„yŏngyang and Inch„ŏn in order to find work. Along with other recruiters from the United States, Allen convinced these farmers to work in the Hawaiian plantations. Nevertheless, few Korean farmers expressed much interest in leaving their homeland until the missionaries like the Rev. George H. Jones, Dr. and Mrs. H. G. Underwood, and the Rev. Henry 1G. Appenzeller actively convinced members of their congregations to go to Hawaii, a “Christian land full of opportunities.”

Horace N. Allen (Photo from the Presbyterian Historical Society)

There were many newspaper advertisements that boasted about life in Hawaii. Many Koreans who faced poverty and political instability at the time were lured by the advertisements promising free housing, decent wages, and medical care. Recruiters described Hawaii as “the paradise island” to attract more people to leave Korea and work in Hawaiian plantations. Many Koreans also borrowed money from a bank in Inch„ŏn which was established by a recruiter David Deshler. Funded only by the Hawaiian Sugar Plantation Association, Deshler‟s Bank lent the Koreans one hundred dollars to finance transportation fees. Once the workers arrived and began working on the plantations, the bank expected that it could take out money from their paychecks to pay back their debts. As a result of the active recruitment efforts of missionaries and recruiters, Koreans from diverse backgrounds such as ex-soldiers, farmers, government clerks, artisans, and laborers immigrated to Hawaii.

Around this time, Japanese plantation workers in Hawaii were frequently engaged in labor protests to fight against low wages and dreadful working conditions: 34 labor strikes were made by the Japanese between 1900 and 1905. To offset the rebellion of Japanese plantation workers, who then made up two-thirds of the entire plantation work force on the islands, the plantation owners showed great interest in recruiting Korean workers who were portrayed as “more obedient and respectful to their employers than any other Orientals.”

S.S. Gaelic (Photo from www.koamhistory.com)

There were a handful of Korean diplomats, students, and merchants who came to the United States between 1883 and 1902. It was not until the S. S. Gaelic, a merchant ship with 102 Koreans, landed at the Port of Honolulu did the number of Korean immigrants increase significantly. Most of these Korean migrants had lived in cities before migrating to Hawaii. The group also consisted primarily of single males: nine out of ten Korean immigrants from 1903 and 1905 were male. Furthermore, due to the recruitment efforts of missionaries, 40 percent of Korean immigrants during this period were Christians.

Between 1903 and 1905, there were approximately 7,000 Korean immigrants in Hawaii. However the immigration door was closed in 1905 when the Korean government was forced to sign the Japanese Protectorate Treaty over Korea also known as the Ŭlsa Treaty. The Japanese government terminated issuing visas to Koreans for two reasons: to protect Japanese laborers in Hawaii from competition with Korean workers, as well as to prevent the Korean national independence movement in the United States.

Easurk Emsen Charr‟s Korean passport (Photo from the photographic collection of the Korean American Archive, University of Southern California)

Life in Hawaii was very difficult for the Korean pioneers. They woke up early in the morning by a loud siren and worked approximately ten hours a day for sixteen dollars a month. Workers wore ID number tags around their necks and had to keep their bodies bent over all day. Cutting sugar cane required such gruesome labor that their hands were full of blisters and badly cut by the sugar cane. Easurk Emsen Charr, who immigrated to Hawaii at the age of ten, recalled in his autobiography The Golden Mountain as follows:

A mansize pickaxe was given to me with which to work. I was to cut down the brushwood and to dig up the roots with it. That pickaxe was so big and heavy, and my hands so small and tender, that pretty soon both of my palms blistered and began to bleed.

In the sugar plantations, a luna, an overseer or supervisor on a horse, strode through the plantation and watched over the workers. When they caught those who were not working, the lunas often whipped them. Women who worked in the camps side-by-side with the men received even less pay for their labor. Some women worked in the camps doing laundry, making clothes, and cooking. According to Ronald Takaki, “Their knuckles became swollen and raw from using the harsh yellow soap.”

Bronze of a Korean woman of Koloa plantation in Hawaii by Jan Gordon Fisher in 1985 (Photo from the Historical Marker Database)

Between 1904 and 1907, about 1,000 Koreans who initially immigrated to Hawaii moved to different locations in the mainland to pursue better opportunities. For example, some Koreans worked in the mines of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming while others moved to Alaska‟s salmon fisheries. Some Koreans settled in Arizona or California and built the railroads. Due to their relatively small number, however, the Koreans in the mainland could not develop their own communities.